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Ch. 9: The Dragon-born
Back to Arheled They came to Rowley Park, Ronnie carrying the long umbrella like a sword and now and again pretending to fence with Ralph or Moriel, to the admiring amusement of the girls. The park stood on the east side of Winsted Rd, under a row of ancient silver maples, whose long branches drooped right down into the playscape. This last was a fenced area, ringed with a white plank fence and paved with wood chips. A sad path zigzagged in square bends through it. Totally purposeless structures of half-sunk payloader tires and truck tires stuck up here and there. Castles of pressure-treated lumber stood on the street side, their towers deliberately constructed so as to be diagonally aslant. Swings between them were suspended from huge single logs upon beams. One structure in the very middle was made to resemble a dragon; tires leaned on each other, higher at the middle, to form its’ segmented body, which rose at the end into a sort of head. One tire was cut in half in jagged triangles like a toothed mouth, propped open, a rubber tongue hanging down, upright small tires forming horns and eyes. There were picnic tables under tall oaks near the cemetery side, and a low brick wall shut off this half from the street. The carnival was set up on the fields to the left, towards Mad River. Blinking strings of lights on the various small rides swung and turned. Crowds of people strolled about the lanes between rides, groups of teenagers most numerous. Laughing faces, shiny with the humidity and makeup, of many pretty girls; the goofy faces of the attendant boys orbiting them; relaxed yet harassed faces of young mothers; faces of dour older people drinking in the crowd. Ronnie was unusually silent as they strolled about, even grim: this crowd felt queer. Hollow. Empty, almost, as if all the high spirits and laughter was artificial and induced by stimulants. As if the people milling around were dead and knew they were dead, but wanted to forget it for one wild evening. Laughter rang out, raucous, too loud, forced. Thunder grumbled. “What’s the matter, Ronnie?” Shannon said slyly, crinkling her dark eyes at him. “You’re so quiet.” “We are on enemy terrain.” he answered. They found Mary, finally, over by the dragon roller coaster. It had a cute castle façade with red lights and a wussy little loop of track with a few lumps. But the train went around it fast enough to make the little kids scream; a cute train, shaped like a long fat dragon with rearing head and segmented body of cars, the scaley sides green and purple, the underbelly yellow. She waved as they came over and the girls all hugged. “Hey, guys! Moriel! I’m glad you made it. Hi Ralph. Hi Ronnie.” Mary said. She was large-built and heavyset, with dark-blond hair tied back, a weird black expression, warm blue eyes and a very pleasant smile. She had heavy but good-looking features and a quick wit. “Those lights almost look like fairy writing.” said Mary as they stood in line for tickets. “You wanna see some real Elf-writing?” said Ronnie. He dug in his backpack until he found a pen he’d pulled out of the gutter, took some scrap paper from a trash bin and began writing in a queer flowing script of curled letters. “Tengwar.” he said. “The Fëanorian script, I think.” “They look like decoration.” said Mary. “I’m more impressed with how he holds that pen.” said Dominique. Ronnie held it with his fingers curled over the stem, his index finger guiding it, his thumb pressed against it from underneath. “I’ve always held it that way.” said Ronnie. “Those are Elf-letters?” said Shannon as Ralph and Mary went forward to buy their tickets. “What are Elves like? Are they fairies?” “Well, fairies were Elves once, is more like it.” he said. “Elves are tall and noble and very fair, but as they grow ancient their spirits consume their bodies, until they seem like wraiths and spectres.” “Am I like an Elf?” Shannon said pertly, looking up at Ronnie with a kind of sly cuteness. “You?’ Mary put in, having bought her tickets. Ronnie with a start went and bought his. “I don’t know, Shannon—you’re kind of pretty in a different way.” “What about you, Ronnie?” said Shannon, who had bought tickets before the others. “What do you see me as?” Ronnie hemmed and hawed, but under pressure he finally got out, “You remind me of a cloud, a soft melty sweet ice-cream cloud.” Shannon gave him a fluttery smile. “That has to be the nicest compliment I’ve ever received.” “What’s Dominique like?” Ralph put in. Dominique giggled. Ronnie laughed. “That’s easy. She’s some kind of exotic tropical lily.” “Oh really?” said Dominique. “Yeah, you hate cold weather, you must be tropical.” Every time he’d seen her last winter she sooner or later would wail in her high-pitched little voice, “Why is it always so cold??” Of course, as she invariably forgot to wear a hat or properly bundle up, some of that was her fault. “I know, you’d think after living here all your life you’d get used to winter, little Miss I’m-Cold.” Mary Rogers tossed off. Dominique pouted. “So, Ronnie, what do you see yourself as?” Mary said, turning to him. Ronnie wrinkled his brows. “Well, it’s a little difficult. We only see out from inside ourselves, we don’t see ourselves as we really are, from outside, you know? We glean some idea of what we are from how we act and how others speak of us, but we don’t see ourselves. The stories always have duplicates astounded at seeing themselves, but that’s not really true, because we only see our own faces backward in mirrors or photos, and when we do we say, ‘Is that me??’ If we met a duplicate of ourselves we probably wouldn’t recognize it, because it wouldn’t fit our mental self-image.” “This is really really interesting.” said Shannon softly. “Yes, I remember that Father Brown story of the famous men who didn’t recognize their own silhouettes in a mirror because they only had a flattering idea of themselves.” said Mary. “So, Ronnie, you seen a mirror lately?” “Hey, I’m not that ugly!” Ronnie pretend-sulked. “You look like a grumpy old man who can’t find his favorite brand of underwear.” said Mary. “It happened. Several times.” “The pitfalls of managing a clothing store.” said Ralph. “You should try working in a pharmacy.” piped Dominique. “You think underwear is embarrassing—how about having ugly old men ask you for Viagra?” Ronnie groaned. Moriel exploded laughing. “Yeah, I just have to go off in back so I can laugh.” Dominique went on. “I mean, these hideous old guys still think they’re what?” “So, Ronnie, what do you see Mary as?” said Shannon. “Yeah, what am I?” put in Mary. “Um…” Ronnie fumbled, looking really at a loss. “Something solid that throws off sparks. I mean you’re solid, but you toss of sparks of wit that illumine things.” Mary laughed. “Ronnie, you are really nice.” Ronnie, pleased and a little flustered, looked around at the crowds. The slow-churning clouds lay dark and somber in the east, and out of the south there now rose an more even and ominous darkness, boding rain. Ronnie’s attention suddenly focused on a man who was standing by the small Ferris wheel in the center, dead still, the crowd parting to pass him as if he was a statue. He was a large man. His head was bald, but bore queer lines along his skull, as if it had been sliced. Even as Ronnie saw him, the man began to climb, up the spokes of the unmoving wheel. The park staff didn’t seem to see him. The crowds didn’t seem to see him. Only Ronnie could. “Hey, what’s that guy doing up there?” said Ralph. “What guy? Oh, the one on the Ferris wheel?” Mary exclaimed. “What the heck?” “I don’t see any guy.” said Shannon. “Me either.” said Dominique. Ronnie said nothing. His hands clenched on the umbrella handle as the thunder growled steadily around them and the first drops of rain, cold and laden with doom, began to hit them. Cornello stood now on the very topmost frame of the wheel, his hands slowly rising, open to the sky. Then they moved and fluctuated in a circle that made Ronnie’s skin crawl, distorted and pregnant with unholy meaning. His fell voice, no longer human, rose hissing and roaring like flame into the sky as he chanted, his hands stretched out above the crowd of unsuspecting and uncaring people of the earth, as he made the evil sign. “Dragon-born, dragon-born '' ''Come now and assume your form, '' ''Dragon-born, dragon-born '' ''Cornello he calls unto you!” '' The skies cracked with lightning. Thunder snapped and crashed overhead. Raindrops, wide and hard, dashed with tremendous force against ground and people, so that each drop left a welt. People began to stream under slides and the food-tents and the dugouts of the nearby baseball fields. But nobody seemed to notice the even more ominous motion that was growing in the crowds. Here and there, among the clustered careless teens with their empty hearty laughter, one or another would suddenly collapse, writhing, smoke coming up from them. And as they writhed they grew larger. Ronnie whirled, clenching the umbrella like a sword, as a crash like shattering glass sounded behind him. Every light on the dragon-ride had exploded at once. There was a shattering clang as all the segmented cars slammed together, as if drawn by magnets. Ronnie glanced around. The prostrate teenagers were elongating, distending. Their companions were drawing back in horrified silence. Already the first screams were mounting up. The children in the roller coaster looked down nervously as their compartments began to close over; and then with shrieks and horrid gargles they were sucked inside, as the dragon-coaster’s locomotive stretched, turned its’ head, and opened eyes of crimson flame. It burped. Dragons. All over the carnival, they were turning into dragons. Gouts of flame erupted everywhere. Stampedes of people rushed in twenty directions. Some fled into the playscape; but out of the ground, shedding dirt and wood chips everywhere, there rose above them a huge monster like a segmented black worm, and in its’ round eyes black fire burned, but the teeth were broad and white, and it lashed about a long black tongue like a prehensile whip, drawing people up to its’ mouth and then chomping down. The carnival was crawling with dragons. Still upon the Ferris wheel stood the Father of Dragons, and there was satisfaction in his big smiling face as he gazed upon his children. The umbrella in the hand of Ronnie felt warm. “We gotta run, we gotta do something!” Moriel was yelling. “Don’t run! They’d be after us in a sec!” Ralph hollored back. “Let’s just…creep slowly and carefully away.” Ronnie said nothing. His feet were planted like roots. There was a gleam like red light in his eyes, as if they reflected the fires of the new dragons that now crawled and coiled about the rides, occasionally chewing up a metal bar or letting off a jet of flame. The umbrella in his hand was lifted like a sword. And the tip of it was now a luminous blue. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Dominique was repeating over and over. “Ronnie? Ronnie, what should we do?” Shannon’s voice was tight, close to panic. “You should get behind me.” Ronnie said in a very quiet voice. The girls went still at the suppressed power in that voice, looking fearfully at him. And at the umbrella in his hand. “I am the Hill of the Road.” he said. The coaster-dragon stopped gnawing on its’ tracks and fixed them with eyes of flame. Another lizard, that had once been a careless crazy and earth-minded girl Ronnie knew from the beach, stopped in the act of lumbering past. The Tire Dragon, now happily burning down the playscape, swivelled it’s segmented head. Blue lightning was running up the umbrella. With a roar of power Ronnie Wendy whirled the umbrella. There was a flashing boom and a blue fist of light threw the beach-girl-dragon into the dugout, crushing it to gravel. He pointed it like a sword as the Coaster Dragon spat a stream of molten metal, and blue power cooled the metal instantly, so that a flowing sheet of metal crashed into the ground. Now the Tire Dragon was spitting balls of fire, but Ronnie swung the umbrella now encased in a nimbus of blue light, and swatted them like tennis balls to exploded against the other dragons and blow great craters in the street and fields. “Follow!” Ronnie thundered. “We must reach the Churches!” He wielded the umbrella like a mighty sword. A blade of rushing fire extended from it, swinging and slashing among the dragons. Though it rebounded from their scales, the dragons howled at its’ touch and gave back. Streams of white, and green, and yellow fire poured. Ronnie whirled the umbrella of power around and around, parrying fire-blasts and deflecting the streams. The Tire Dragon was before him, suddenly, mouth opened, fire roaring forth. Ronnie shouted aloud as he suddenly thrust. A punch of blue light sent the Tire Dragon up in shards, bits of tires flying in every direction. At this the dragons drew back, and Ronnie raced out of the ring. His friends hurried after him, dazed and numb, like folk in a living nightmare. The dragons stared balefully after them. Pushing his friends along, Ronnie bright up the rear, the umbrella flickering blue in his hand. They rounded the old brick factory on the corner and hastened up Main. Sudden steams and a dragonish scream announced that one dragon had tried to ford Mad River. Behind them came the sliding scrape of dozens of dragons on asphalt. They were following. “Cornello knows we fled.” he said. For a wonder nobody was asking questions. The girls were apparently in some kind of shock and had to be led by the hand, and then Dominique fainted and Moriel had to carry her, although he soon asked Ralph for help as she was heavier than she looked. Mary was quiet, looking around constantly but otherwise all right. “What just happened?” she finally asked. “We’re being chased by dragons, of course.” said Ronnie, batting a fireball with the umbrella. “Faster.” “Not what I meant and you know it.” Ronnie sighed and shot a blue thunderbolt at a dragon that was pressing too close. It squealed and dropped back. “A great sign appeared in the sky, a dragon with seven heads, and upon those heads ten horns, and upon them seven diadems. And the dragon went off to make war on the woman and her offspring.” “That’s the Devil, isn’t it?” “Not so allegorical as you’d think. That dragon has lived here in Winsted, possessing a man named Cornello, until he took that body for his own and ate that soul. And he begot many children here, and today he seems to have called them all awake. And they’re starting to catch up,” he added, blasting a moat across Main St. Sirens were wailing now. “Run!” They broke into a stumbling trot up the final part, the Episcopalian church of St. James above them, nearest of the Five Churches. The empty niche over the door looked mournfully down at them as they mounted the steps. Ronnie warded a blast of flame by holding the umbrella over them; it flew open of itself and a blue-light shield repelled the fire. “The door’s locked.” puffed Ralph. Ronnie smote the doors with the Umbrella. A blue glow rippled through them. There was a series of sliding clicks and the doors opened. From down the street came explosions of bursting police cars, and sirens wailed into nothing. Gunshots and eerie squeals followed, and the roaring laughter of the dragons. But Ronnie and his friends stumbled into the church, and the doors shut, and all sound ceased. “They can still get in here, can’t they?” said Ralph. “I think stone would keep out fire.” said Mary. “And the roof’s metal, isn’t it?” “Metal melts, and stone cracks, if the fire is hot enough.” said Ronnie. “But I don’t think it will come to that.” There was the sound of a great body scraping along the outside of the walls. Stone shuddered faintly. “I think if anything threatens these Churches, very strange things will happen.” Bell Light was playing at that moment on Wintergreen Island. It was quiet down here most days, for most of the cabins and lake houses around the south end had been either destroyed or damaged, and only here and there were folk rich enough to hire developers to clean up the wreckage and rebuild. But she paid this no mind today. Forest had left Andy Engine and his collection of matchbox cars he called “Superland Characters” downstairs, and taking advantage of him being outside in the summer evening to watch the thunderstorm, she was playing with them in the living room. They all had superpowers, according to Forest, such as Guppy and Mike O’Sheelee the airplanes who could call up gales, or Mrs. Stansager the green ferryboat who had water powers. Tame, considering the things that walked in real life, but both were still revelling in their newly recovered memories and found the old fancies relaxing. The thunderstorm that had been hanging in the air for hours as darkness drew on, was beginning at last to break. Bell squealed with delight and raced outside, laughing as she felt the rain: running around in pouring rain was one of her favorite activities. Suddenly she felt very cold, and queer, and musty; as if for a split second her hands were of ancient damp wood and her body of old stone and shingle; and then her sight cleared. She stood alone in a place of crazy branching timbers, dark with age and dry as dust, dim and lit only by flecks of light coming through chinks, perhaps, or from some high and secret window. She stood on a sort of catwalk of planks, a rail or rough 2 x 4s running along it on the right, a line of ancient light bulbs strung above it. To either side a cross-braced floor of thin plank fell down into darkness, and beams and joists and braces ran about like a spiderweb above her. She stood beneath the roof of St. Joseph’s Church. Bell had no idea how she knew this. She simply and utterly certain. The floor vibrated under her and the braces all around creaked and muttered, as if some great burden were pressing on the mighty roof. Bell put out her hand and grasped the wood. Dragons were crawling up the stone face of the church. She saw them, coiling like huge and abominable snakes around the spire, and crawling overhead along the roof ridge, and sniffing at the shut doors. She saw dragon-faces beside the gargoyles of St. James, one coiled about the tower and trying to crush it like a boa constrictor. Dragons wound about the battlements of New Baptist, and made the roof of the Methodist tower groan. They were climbing on the steeple towers of Old Baptist. Fire streamed against the steeple of St. Joseph’s, and fell back, foiled by the slate shingles. Bell screamed with pain. It was as if the old buildings were part of her, or she was part of them. She acted by instinct. As the dragons began to batter, hammering roof and wall with tail and flame, she made the churches indestructible. It wasn’t as simple as it sounds. She simply flinched and clenched her muscles as if to repel a blow; and she felt stone settle and become denser, cement grip unbreakably, wood clench like a muscle, shingles fuse, and the dragons’ blows and dragons’ flames rebounded from them like snakes slapped against a rock. She heard their squeals and howls of pain. A sudden panicky ferocity seized Bell; like when she fond a tick on her leg and practically tore a hole in herself getting it off; or when she heard mice in the walls and wanted them ''out, wanted them gone; so now she felt, and so now she wanted the dragons off her five huge bodies of stone and wood. '' “Begone!”'' she screamed. A great peace fell over her. The tick was out. The mice dropped dead. The invaders were repulsed. She let go of the handrail and stepped back, into the living room of her house. she’d better put the cars back; Forest might be mad if he came in and caught her playing with them. “Was I dreaming?” she wondered. “If I was, that was a really weird dream. I’ll tell Forest when I find him.” Ronnie Wendy felt St. James come alive. It was hard to tell how he knew but he did. It was as if stone and carving, pew and window suddenly shifted, were part of an entity, were suffused with power. He raced to the front door and ran outside. The outer wall was glowing. A clear white-purple light, barely perceptible, was raying through the yellowed fieldstones and the mortar in between. The sea-green metalled roof seemed to shine, although the storm overhead was now so dark with the night it seemed like a wall of doom. The eyes of the gargoyles were eyes of fire, and their open mouths spewed not water but light. The dragons felt it, too. They stopped their curious sniffing and crawling, suddenly remembering what they were here for. Destroying flame blasted from mouths. Huge tails smashed like the clubs of giants against the stone walls. Ronnie threw open the umbrella to repel the fire, then peered out, ready to battle against the dragons in defense of the fortresses. He didn’t have to. Dragons were nursing bruised tails and sneezing from misfired flames. And the church stood, unharmed, not a crack, not a burn. Suddenly a blinding glow broke from the stone church. Every rock in the wall was as bright as sunrise clouds. From the mouths of the gargoyles beams of pure opaque white shone forth, fading out a good ten yards from the walls. Dragons were catapulted through the air. Winged or wingless, for those few minutes they all flew. Bright shapes passed like thunderbolts against the sea-dark sky. The other churches had shed their dragons as well, it seemed. The storm shattered overhead, lightning following the falling dragons and their screams mingling with the ringing of the thunder. Down poured a hail of harsh rain. Blades of jagged white broke the skies apart, only to seal together the next moment. Ronnie went back inside. They were all huddled in the pews, the unnatural light shining in sudden vivid color in at the stained glass windows, illuminating the solemn mournful figures of what had to be the gloomiest Risen Christ and angels that the others had ever seen, gazing dismally from the mysterious pale window. “It’s over.” he said blankly. “The Churches just shed the dragons.” “Whaaa…?” said Mary, but nobody pressed for an explanation. “Where are all the police?” Shannon said as they went outside, looking down the street. Smoke still rose from the burning carnival, and the tall old townhouse block on the left, and the factory on the right, all looked like they’d been shelled, black and blasted. The huge Bartlett pears that stood in front of the former were sere and leafless, half-consumed. A couple of red-black skeleton cars lay upside down in the torn pavement. Traffic was starting to back up. A big ditch had been blasted across the street. “I think they all went to supper.” said Ronnie dryly. “Someone else’s supper.” “I hope they’re indigestible.” said Mary. They waited in the doorway for the storm to let up, as sirens sounded once more and fire trucks showed up, state police and remnants of local police collecting like swarming wasps. Ronnie felt it wiser to stay out of sight for a while and made them shut the door. “After all,” he said to Shannon’s objections, “are they going to believe the truth?” When the rain slackened they headed up to St. Joseph’s, the umbrella open and held by Ronnie. It seemed quite plain and boring now, a common umbrella, but the girls looked askance at it and preferred to walk in the rain. Mary accepted its’ cover. They shut the church door and heard the bolts click back into place, and then walked back up Main to the Catholic church. Police had yellow tape everywhere and were putting up DETOUR signs. It was a quiet and somber group that said their goodbyes and went their many ways. “Forest,” said Bell, “how do you tell if you dreamed something or if it happened? I mean, you’re the dreamer.” Forest leaned on the glass door and stared out at the grey lake through the oak’s leaning branches, leaving greasy nose-prints and breath circles. The storm was rolling up and passing, leaving the last remains of daylight to brighten the air. Rain made the waves look all pitted and dotted. “You wake up.” he said at last. “No, I mean, if one moment you remember playing with—my toys—and next moment you remember being inside a church’s roof and—then you’re back in the room. I mean, I '' must'' have fallen asleep.” “You wake up.” said Forest stubbornly. “If you’re dreaming, you wake up. We are under the Road—weird things are supposed to happen to us.” “I felt them.” she said. “I felt the Five Churches inside me. Like I was in them. Like I was them.” “What did you do?” said Forest. “I called awake the Churches to repel a host of dragons.” she answered. “You weren’t dreaming.” he said curtly, and resumed staring out at the lake. Back to Arheled